Evolution of the CoCo Virtual Drive System

MicroSD Drive Pak

• Earliest all-in-one self-contained virtual drive system
• Uses a 16K smart ROM that detects and employs numerous simultaneous drive systems
• CoCoNet over 6551 ACIA
• 115200 bps alternative serial port drives if 6551 device is unavailable
• 4GB MicroSD card drives using unlimited partitioning scheme
• Some known DOS-based software crashes due to programmers not calling DSKCON correctly, or attempt to use direct FDC code.

DriveWire

• Earliest released floppy drive emulator
• Requires a very close-by PC
• Crashes due to programmers using hard-coded nonstandard calls to the DOS ROM
• Crashes due to buggy server over unstable serial port circuitry combined with cable quality
• Requires a bottle of Advil and much patience especially with the latest ridiculous DriveWire 4 by Aaron Wolfe.  And if the serial port doesn’t like 115200 bps very much, by all means push it to 230400 bps.
• Not stable enough for serious applications, runs over noisy bitbanger link

CoCoSDC

• Evolved on the MicroSD Drive Pak concept
• Emulates the 1773 FDC controller using a cartridge and SD card
• CoCo thinks the virtual disks are real FDC disks
• Rare if any DOS software crashing

CoCo On A Chip

• SD card virtual disk system
• FDC circuitry, compatible with DOS and OS-9 without patches
• WIFI virtual disk system (in development)
• Bluetooth virtual disk system
• FAT32 SD card support